Latest news with #magistrates
Telegraph
21 hours ago
- Telegraph
Judges trained to protect themselves from violence in court
Judges and magistrates are to get compulsory security training to protect them against rising violence and abuse from members of the public in civil courts. They have been issued with 'essential' training, which must be completed by March next year, to protect them from PVPs, or 'potentially violent people'. The new package is designed not to counter criminals but to protect the judiciary from ordinary members of the public participating in civil courts such as employment tribunals, family and coroner courts. It includes guidance from the HM Courts and Tribunal (HMCTS) on physical security based on five key actions – 'deter, detect, delay, mitigate and respond'. Role play films Judges are also shown a series of shocking 'role play' films where people lose their temper in court. In a tribunal, an employer shouts: 'Call yourself a judge? You're a f---ing disgrace.' In the family court, a swearing man aggressively approaches the judge, before the film freezes. And in a coroner's court, the father of a child who has died by suicide shouts at the judge: 'Just make a f---ing decision. I just want to see my son buried, for Christ's sake.' The training also includes personal testimony from senior judicial figures who have faced dangerous real-life scenarios. District Judge McIlwaine recounts how someone in his court threw water over a barrister and sprayed water around the court before hurling the jug. Judge Barry Clarke, the president of the employment tribunals (England and Wales), recalls one litigant attacked the opposing counsel before chasing the judge down the corridor. Senior coroner Heidi Connor describes how the mother of a child who took their own life smashed the courtroom door before banging her head against the wall threatening to kill herself. She was involved in a second case when there was a 'riot' in the court until someone was found with an 'improvised Taser'. An expert from the College of Policing gives vital tips in each case on how to deal with the escalating tensions while Matthew Braham, the HMCTS security chief, points to measures taken to ensure physical security with emergency plans, panic alarms and experienced court security officers on hand. The guidance states: 'HMCTS operates a holistic, multi-layered approach to physical security, utilising the national protective security authority's 'deter, detect, delay, mitigate, respond' methodology. 'In brief, this refers to the need for multiple 'layers' of security controls, each layer being made up of several individual security controls acting as part of an overall system wherein the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.' Deterrence means creating a 'hard target' so an attacker decided not to act in the first place, detection allows security officers to intervene, while delaying involves introducing barriers and obstacles to slow the progress of an attack. Mitigating an incident reduces its impact and responding brings it to an end. Lord Justice Green, the senior presiding judge, said: 'Judicial security is of the utmost importance. Threats to security come from many sources, which includes litigants, and those associated with them. 'Your ability to do right, by all manner of people, without fear or favour, which is the very essence of your judicial oath and your function, is placed at risk if threats are made which seek to sway you one way or another in the difficult decisions you take on a daily basis. 'This training package focuses upon your safety in court and hearing rooms and is, but one component of a much broader strategy designed to protect the judiciary. The training is intended to assist you, in a practical way, to remain safe whilst you perform your judicial tasks.'
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Man caught trespassing on train track with a knife
AN ISLE of Wight man in crisis caught with a knife while trespassing on a railway track in Ryde will learn his fate later this year. Johnathan Weaver, of Barton Road, Newport, appeared before Isle of Wight magistrates on Friday, August 15. The 41-year-old admitted possession of a knife in a public place, and trespassing in proximity of a railway, in Ryde, on July 16. Prosecutor, Giles Fletcher, said the case related to an incident at Ryde Esplanade Railway Station. Read more: Man 'in a bad mood' violently assaulted his own father with a stick Motorist accused of careless driving after serious Church Litten incident He said Weaver had already been convicted of an offence involving a knife in 2015, which means he is now facing a six-month jail term as a minimum, unless it is deemed there were exceptional circumstances. The court heard he was on the train track, deeper issues were involved, and a pre-sentence report was needed. Michael McGoldrick, defending, said Weaver was discharged from Sevenacres earlier in the day and was clearly in a mental health crisis at the time. He said Weaver had made remarkable progress since the incident and a probation report would be invaluable. Weaver's case was adjourned to October 24. He was granted unconditional bail.
Yahoo
02-08-2025
- Yahoo
Teenage waitress convicted in fast-track courts over mix-up with surprise 18th birthday gift
A teenage girl has received a criminal conviction for failing to get insurance on a surprise 18th birthday gift of a car – before it had actually been given to her. The waitress, from Poole in Dorset, said her family bought the Fiat as a present to celebrate her landmark birthday, but mistakenly did not insure it immediately. Last month, the DVLA charged her with keeping an uninsured vehicle and brought a criminal prosecution over the unpaid bill. She explained the mix-up in a letter to Ipswich magistrates court, saying she had never driven the vehicle as she does not yet have a licence and at the time of the offence she did not even know the car was hers. But it was not enough to spare her from a criminal conviction. It is the latest piece of harsh justice to emerge from the Single Justice Procedure, an under-fire fast-track court process where magistrates hand out convictions in private court hearings. The Labour government is dragging its feet on reforming the court process, despite lobbying from prosecutors, lawyers, and even magistrates themselves that the system is broken. The teenager wrote in her letter: 'My family got the car for me as my 18th birthday present. I was still 17 at the time of the offence and had not actually been given the keys to the car and was not aware that it would be mine.' She set out that she and her father have reading difficulties, and it was only when a friend read an official letter for them that they realised the car needed to be insured even if it was not being driven. She said they received a rebate on car tax after declaring the 17-year-old Fiat 'off road' with a Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN), and did not realise she could pay a fine to avoid a criminal case. 'I have never used the car as I have still not passed my driving test', she continued. 'My dad is willing to pay the fine for me as he thinks this is his fault. 'He receives Universal Credit and PIP for his mental health, and I have just finished college and currently have a part-time job as a waitress on the minimum wage for an 18-year-old.' She pleaded guilty to the offence, dated in January and just under four weeks before her 18th birthday, and added: 'I was a good student in school and college studying art and have never been in any trouble in my life. We just misunderstood the letter, I thought it said I had to SORN it or pay a fine if it doesn't get sorted. 'I am very sorry.' One of the flaws in the Single Justice Procedure is that prosecutors do not see mitigation letters, due to the fast-track nature of the process. It means they do not get the chance to assess the personal circumstances of defendants, and cannot decide if a prosecution continues to be in the public interest. The DVLA itself has called on the government to change the system, so that prosecutors see all mitigation before a magistrate is called on to decide a case. This reform has been backed by the Magistrates Association and the Bar Council, but is opposed by the BBC. The government closed a consultation on Single Justice Procedure reform in early May, and has repeatedly refused to set out a timetable for reform. In a statement to The Standard, it said it is 'currently evaluating responses' to the consultation. The system operates every week at magistrates courts across England and Wales, dealing with around 800,000 low-level criminal cases a year. It was also the subject of a damning recent report by think tank Transform Justice. Responding to the report, the Ministry of Justice claimed that there has never been a recorded miscarriage of justice due to the Single Justice Procedure. In the teenage waitress' case, a magistrate gave her a 12-month conditional discharge instead of a fine. But she chose not to send the case back to the DVLA for an extra public interest check. The teen will now have a criminal conviction, and must also pay a £20 court fee.
Telegraph
20-07-2025
- Telegraph
Half of all criminal convictions decided in secret
Nearly half of all convictions in England and Wales are being decided in secret by a single magistrate without the defendant appearing in court or having any legal representation, a new report has revealed. Out of a total of 1.5 million convictions handed down last year, some 772,580 were issued by magistrates behind closed doors under a system designed to speed up justice and clear the backlog of cases left by the pandemic. The number of such prosecutions has doubled since their introduction in 2015 under the Single Justice Procedure (SJP) where a volunteer magistrate sits alone with an on-call legal adviser to pass judgment on as many as a 100 cases a day. They now account for two thirds of all magistrates' cases. At least 110 different crimes can be prosecuted under the SJP system, from speeding and out-of-date MOTs to failing to get your child to attend school and littering. However, the majority (73 per cent) of those accused do not plea guilty or not guilty, double the rate of 38 per cent in open magistrates' hearings, according to an investigation by Transform Justice, a charity that campaigns for fair justice. Most defendants do not enter any plea partly because prosecution forms are sent by post with no proof of receipt required. This means they can end up at the wrong address, get lost or be dismissed as junk mail, according to the report. 'People are given three weeks to fill in the prosecution form and are not sent a reminder. Those who do not respond to the prosecution notice are nearly always judged as guilty and sentenced in their absence,' said Transform Justice. 'This means most people convicted under the SJP have not pleaded, and may not even know or understand they have been prosecuted. Many SJP cases are reopened by defendants who say they never received the prosecution notice, and only knew about it when they got a letter saying they had been convicted.' Most SJP offences are 'strict liability', which means prosecutors do not have to prove the defendant intended to commit the offence, nor whether the prosecution is in the public interest. ''I made a mistake' is not a valid legal defence,' said the report. As a result, people have been fined for minor errors. One person was prosecuted for selecting a 16-25 age railcard discount when they had a 26-30 railcard, even though the price for the tickets was the same. Transform Justice said that the way many of the prosecution forms were structured meant any mitigating factors a defendant might want to put forward, such as any disabilities, could be missed or ignored. 'The greatest injustice of the SJP is that it facilitates convicting people for mistakes, and for errors made due to illness or disability. We are prosecuting people at an industrial scale, often without any evidence they intended to commit a crime, with few safeguards,' said Penelope Gibbs, director of Transform Justice. 'There is nothing wrong with some crimes being strict liability (where no intention needs to be proved), but to do so using an inaccessible, untransparent system is surely unfair.' Organisations that can prosecute using SJP include police, DVLA, local councils, the BBC and train companies but unlike the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), there is no requirement to conduct a test of whether a prosecution is in the public interest. An investigation by the Office for Road and Rail (ORR) found four train operating companies (TOCs) had no formal test for deciding whether to prosecute in the public interest and it was 'unclear' if there was a test in other TOCs. It found some SJP prosecutors had no legal qualifications. The majority of TOCs 'appear not to require any formal qualifications or accreditation for their prosecution staff, relying instead on various combinations of on-the-job training and in-house or externally delivered training,' said the ORR. Some prosecutors had as little as five days' training. 'Where TOCs provided information on the length of internal training, this varied considerably – from five days to three months,' said the ORR. In one case, Sarah Hodgson, a rail passenger, challenged her fare evasion charge. Magistrates found the case so weak they asked why the rail company went ahead with the prosecution. Its legal representative said: 'I'm just representative of them and my instruction is to proceed. I'm not an expert in railways laws.' An SJP conviction is a criminal conviction but defendants can only avoid a criminal record if they pay the fine. The average SJP fine is £284 but can be as low as £40 or as high as £10,000 for the worst Covid offences. They can also be ramped up by prosecuting authorities adding on legal costs. The SJP procedure has been successfully challenged after a campaign led by Christian Waters, who won a landmark ruling that the SJP had been wrongly used for 74,000 prosecutions for alleged fare evasion, leading to the convictions being quashed. As a result of that case and campaigns by Transform Justice, the Government is considering how to improve scrutiny of prosecutors. Ms Gibbs said there needed to be 'more reform and fast' to end the 'systemic injustice'. A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'The Government recently consulted on the Single Justice Procedure and regulation of private prosecutors to review what more can be done to support vulnerable defendants, and we will respond in due course. 'The decision to prosecute cases under the Single Justice Procedure is made by the prosecuting authority, and only uncontested and non-imprisonable offences are eligible.'
Washington Post
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Hong Kong tightens prison rules, allowing visit restrictions on national security grounds
HONG KONG — Hong Kong tightened prison rules, allowing authorities to restrict visits, including those by certain lawyers and religious personnel, on national security grounds, in the latest expansion of its stringent control . Under the new rules, effective Friday, magistrates can issue warrants on application by correctional service officers to bar exchanges between specific legal representatives and persons in custody if the judges believe such connections could harm national security or cause bodily harm to any person, among other reasons.
